Panamá, four hours south of Miami as the plane flies, is the new “Hub of the Americas”: a global link for world commerce, a city proud of its rapid economic growth and booming construction industry, and a popular destination for residential tourism (mainly for American retirees).

Panama City has always looked up to Miami, but the Miami it aspired to become is the Miami of fantasies, that mysterious place in the United States somewhere near Disney World where your aunt lived, where your wealthy friends went shopping, where the best Carnaval in the world happened (because it’s the Capital of Latin America), the city of Miami Vice that Gloria Estefan calls home, and a place so nice it had a type of window named after it. Therefore, we really have no trouble when we’re told (derisively) that our city looks just like Miami.

We must be doing something right. This may not be the only city that aspires at becoming Miami —and it’s always Miami, never New York—but in our hearts and minds it’s the one that’s gotten the closest. Panama, full of aspirations and ever striving to become a first world metropolis, has in the last decade been blessed by constant growth and emerged largely unscathed from the global economic meltdown, thus becoming a city that is “more Miami than Miami itself.”

The real Miami, on the other hand, has been the proud bearer of epithets like “the magic city” ever since being conceived by Julia Tuttle, and remains a fertile fount of stereotypes that still inform our tropical glamorous Latin American identities.

After putting your perception and knowledge to the test (Otto Berchem, Magdalena Fragnito di Giorgio), and discovering works which scrutinise measurement in order to better cast it into doubt (Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Stanley Brouwn), you will plunge into evaluation, critique and the caustic views of three artists on contemporary art (Ben, Marcel Broodthaers, Présence Panchounette). It will then be up to you to feel that you have shed your complexes to be able to evaluate contemporary art according to your own criteria!

We are so very Miami is an exhibition curated for UNTITLED.
Its purpose is to explore the links between Miami and Panama City and showcase their parallel histories, imaginary or otherwise.

Panama, four hours south of Miami as the plane flies, is the new “Hub of the Americas”: a global link for world commerce, a city proud of its rapid economic growth and booming construction industry, and a popular destination for residential tourism (mainly for American retirees). ¿Does any of this sound familiar?

Panama City has always looked up to Miami, but the Miami it aspired to become is the Miami of fantasies, that mysterious place in the United States somewhere near Disney World where your aunt lived, where your wealthy friends went shopping, where the best Carnaval in the world happened (because it’s the Capital of Latin America), the city of Miami Vice that Gloria Estefan calls home, and a place so nice it had a type of window named after it. Therefore, we really have no trouble when we’re told (derisively)
that our city looks just like Miami. We must be doing something right. This may not be the only city that aspires at becoming Miami—and it’s always Miami, never New York—but in our hearts and minds it’s the one that’s gotten the closest.

Panama, full of aspirations and ever striving to become a first world metropolis, has in the last decade been blessed by constant growth and emerged largely unscathed from the global economic meltdown, thus becoming a city that is “more Miami than Miami itself.”
The real Miami, on the other hand, has been the proud bearer of epithets like “the magic city” ever since being conceived by Julia Tuttle, and remains a fertile fount of stereotypes that still inform our tropical glamorous Latin American identities.

The inaugural exhibition “The Future Begins Here” is an opportunity for visitors to discover the Frac Nord-Pas de Calais collection. This collection, which joins contemporary art and design, includes more than 1,500 works acquired since the 1980s and mixes works by major artists with others by young talents.

The architecture designed by the Lacaton & Vassal agency is the jewel case in which the first exhibition by Frac Nord-Pas de Calais in its new building is set, where visitors will be plunged into its collection.

Together, the spaces in the Frac/AP2 – passageways, exhibition galleries, outreach spaces, indoors and out – are also the pretext for the presentation of projects and installations, in some cases produced especially for the occasion. Matthew Darbyshire is taking over the Salon, providing visitors with a space of relaxation and discovery; Otto Berchem questions visitors about the Frac’s collection; Rainier Lericolais invites them on an audio promenade between the LAAC and the Frac, a veritable poetic ramble and free interpretation of the region’s history; and Angela Bulloch uses the wind to light up the AP2 hangar. Even the Frac’s café will become a work of art in its own right thanks to the artistic duo Lang/Baumann.

The exhibition “The Future Begins Here”takes place throughout the entire Frac/AP2 building. Each space presents a theme or group of work found in the collection: videos, the relation between art and design, participative works. Visitors will discover at every turn – in a corridor, a salon, an exhibition gallery – a true survey of contemporary art of these past thirty years.